CAROL MARINELLI - Her Passionate Italian - The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

‘Does the fact that you’re here and not in Milan mean that you’ve tired of making Angelo’s life a misery and let him come back too?’ she threw back.

He smiled at this attempt on her part at acid sarcasm but his reply when it came was deadly serious. ‘Angelo deserved everything he got from me, Francesca, and don’t let him tell you otherwise.’

‘I suppose you’ve never overslept and missed a meeting.’

‘Not even after a heavy night with a beautiful woman in my bed,’ he replied. ‘Although…’ his eyes moved over her ‘… I can appreciate that the cause in this case was worth the consequences…’

He was inferring that she was what had caused Angelo to oversleep that morning, Francesca realised, and opened her mouth to deny the charge only to close it again when she realised that Angelo must have used her as his excuse for missing his flight. A frown creased her brow and she lowered her eyes to the ground while she tried to decide how she felt about that. She didn’t think she liked it. It smacked too hard at the male ego conjuring up a night of erotic sex with his lover as a way of getting himself out of an awkward situation. Her mind even threw up a picture of Angelo standing in some faceless office in Milan, casually boasting to this man of all men about something that should remain private to themselves—if it had happened at all, which it hadn’t.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She spun away, not wanting to continue this line of discussion. Not wanting to be here at all. She was cross now with Angelo—cross with Carlo Carlucci for placing a cloud across her golden image of the man she loved.

There was a hiss of impatience, a scraping of shoe leather on the road surface. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, and began striding towards her across the lane.

Her shoulders tensed, her clenched hands jerking out of her pockets as those now familiar prickles began really asserting themselves the closer he came. A hand curved around her arm, long fingers gently crushing sun-warmed denim against the skin beneath that began to burn like a flame. She jumped in response to it, her breathing snagged. He turned her to face him and she found herself fascinated by the discovery that her eyes came level with his smooth brown throat.

‘I embarrassed you. I apologise,’ he murmured huskily, and she watched his throat muscles move with the words. ‘It was unforgivably crass and insensitive of me to say what I just said.’

Yes, Francesca agreed. It had been crass and insensitive—but which man had been the most crass and insensitive?

‘Forget it,’ she said, but both of them knew she was only mouthing words she did not mean.

‘If it helps, he did not mention you by name,’ he offered.

‘Meaning what?’ she flashed. ‘That he left it open to interpretation as to whether he was sleeping around or not? Great. Thanks.’ She gave an angry tug at her arm.

He refused to let go. She could feel his anger, the pulse of his frustration because his bit of light teasing had gone so wrong.

‘I apologise—again,’ he bit out finally.

Francesca glared daggers at his chest. ‘I suppose you think it’s all just jolly good fun to swap sexual experiences across some office desk,’ she said shakily. ‘Men being men,’ with lots of phews and wows and you’d have overslept too if you’d been there . She’d heard the men at work talking like that, having no idea how cheap they made their lovers sound. ‘Egotistic cockerels crowing about their prowess,’ she muttered, not realising she’d said the words out loud until he laughed as if he couldn’t help himself.

‘Don’t laugh at me!’ she snapped out hotly.

‘Then don’t say such comical things,’ he threw back. ‘You sound like some outraged virgin.’

But she was an outraged virgin—that was the whole point! ‘Did you tell him all about the way you propositioned me on the Corso just to even up the score a bit?’

‘No,’ he denied. ‘But the interesting point here is—did you tell him?’

‘Why, are you worried that he might damage your famed sexual ego by telling him how you made a play for his woman and got turned down flat?’

It was reckless. She shouldn’t have said it. His eyes turned as black as bottomless caverns and his other hand came up to capture her other arm. Hard fingers crushed the denim fabric as he drew her closer.

‘Did you turn me down?’ he prompted. ‘Or did you run like a frightened rabbit because you were already so turned on you didn’t know how to cope with it?’

‘That’s not true!’ she gasped in shocked horror.

‘Shall we test that?’

She saw in the dark glitter of his eyes what he meant to do next and drew in a sharp breath. Suddenly something dangerous was dancing in the air, spinning silver spider webs of tension into the golden sunlight.

Then a twig snapped somewhere, bringing the whole episode clattering down as both heads turned to stare across the top of her great-uncle’s wooden gates. Trapped in a trembling force field that held her breathless, Francesca searched the wilderness in some wild, weak, pathetic hope that her great-uncle was about to appear to rescue her from this.

It didn’t happen. No dapper old gentleman wearing a wine-red velvet smoking jacket appeared on the twig-strewn driveway. The dappling light from the afternoon sun quivered amongst the heavily leafed branches of the tangled trees and vines and played with peeling ochre paint, but otherwise the wilderness garden remained at peace.

She sighed as she thought that, the action parting her lips to release the sad sound. He moved, she looked back at him without thinking and met head-on with a pair of dark, brooding eyes that told her things she didn’t want to know—or feel the way she was feeling them.

It was better to look away. ‘Please let me go,’ she whispered shakily.

His fingers flexed against the denim and for a horrible moment she thought he was going to ignore her plea and just continue from where he’d been interrupted. Her throat ran dry. She tried to swallow. The promise of tears bloomed across her eyes.

Then his grip eased and slowly lifted. She stepped back—went to turn her back, desperate now to get away.

‘You are acquainted with Bruno Gianni?’ he asked.

‘What…?’ She blinked, lifting slightly unfocused eyes back to his face. ‘Oh, n-no,’ she denied, and quickly lowered her eyes again—not because of the lie she’d just uttered but because she didn’t want him to see the threatening tears.

She shoved her hands back in her pockets, swung away and made another attempt to leave.

‘Strange …’ he murmured. ‘I could have sworn I saw you posting a note in the letter box as I drove up.’

And she froze all over again. ‘Y-you mistook what you saw,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was admiring the garden, that’s all.’

‘The garden,’ he repeated and uttered a soft laugh. ‘ Cara , that isn’t a garden, it is a neglected mess!’

‘And what would you know about a real garden?’ she swung round to slice at him, not sure if she was responding to his derision or the near kiss she had just escaped. ‘I bet your idea of a beautiful garden has to be something filled with straight lines and must be manicured to within an inch of its life!’

‘Bruno Gianni obviously doesn’t feel like that,’ he pointed out.

He was laughing— still laughing at her! He’d even leant a shoulder against one of the gateposts—right next to her letter box! And he’d folded those wretched arms again, tugging that jumper up over the bronze stud at his waist. She hated him, really hated every hard, mocking inch of his sardonic, handsome— sexy stance!